


gentle flesh

by Askance



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Body Horror, Canonical Character Death (Reimagined), Hell Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Self-cest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 08:48:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6604453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's soul is back, safe and sound, from Hell--but his body's nowhere to be found. He's on the run, leaving nothing in his wake but echoes. He doesn't want his soul back, and he's got good reasons. When Sam finds him, hiding out in a motel room halfway across the country, they only have until morning to decide: whether to become one person again, or part ways forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the debut round of the [Rare Pair Big Bang](http://rarepairbb.tumblr.com/), hosted over on Tumblr!
> 
> LJ masterpost with art can be found [here](http://steeplechasers.livejournal.com/114941.html).
> 
> ETA: Dean-bashing in the comments is no bueno, my dudes. Makes me awful sad. <3

_Duluth, MN_

 

It's a wonder Dean can't hear it. The _noise_ in here. 

 

Sam stands—floats, whatever—near the nightstand of the abandoned room. Unable to do much except watch Dean turn the place over: flinging back the bedspreads, opening the closet and closing it again, shunting drawers off their rails. The Bible in one of the drawers falls half-open to the floor. Dean doesn't bother to pick it up, so Sam does, instead. It rises slowly into the air, tremulous, and goes flat on the dresser-top.

 

“He's not here,” Sam says.

 

Dean's too angry to say anything back, to thank him for  _pointing out the obvious, genius_ . He's already looked under the bed twice—for what, Sam isn't sure—and now he's down on the floor again, triple, quadruple-checking.

 

He's not here, but the  _noise_ of him is. Sam's starting to understand what that means. The way everything he sees is washed blue—how thin walls seem, and doors. He noticed it first in the car: a low rumble even beneath her engine, the noise of Dean existing in her for so long, and his own voice woven there, too, though weaker, more far away. 

 

Ghosts make more and more sense to him, the longer he is one.

 

_I'm not what he says I am._ That's the noise in here. If he could pinpoint it, it would be layered under the peeling wallpaper, the print of rusty fleur de lis. His own voice, but steelier.  _Don't listen to him. I'm not what he says I am. I want to live._

 

He frowns. 

 

Dean's voice comes in over the noise, like clarity breaking out of radio static.”Hey.” He won't look directly at Sam; he's too bright, apparently. “Where's he headed? Can you feel it?”

 

Sam turns, looks to the window, the cool black glass. Outside the lights of Duluth are stale and icy. “South,” he says, with unease. “South-east. More—Iowa.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“I'm sure.”

 

Dean checks his rifle, clicks up the safety. He gives one more passing glance around the empty room. Pauses. His eyes move in Sam's direction, shrinking in his light.

 

“How you doing?”

 

“Good as I can be,” Sam says.  _Being this way;_ he neglects to say that. The noise ratchets up. It's almost like he knew—like he knew to leave a message—he should say something. “Dean, I—”

 

“Let's go,” Dean says. It's useless. When his brother's on a mission like this there's no stopping him, no listening to reason. “Keep feeling for him, okay?”

 

If Sam could sigh, he'd be sighing. “Okay.”

* * *

 

He tries to dim down as much as he can, but it's hard to control any part of himself. As far as ghosts go, he's not a very good ghost.

 

Seventy-two hours ago he was in Hell. Sixty-seven hours ago he was back on Earth again—no body, no substance. Just a light that made his brother shrink from him, shield his eyes. Dean, with a broken nose and blood scabbed on his lips, furious, because  _he_ had slipped away, somehow. He doesn't know how, he keeps saying, rubbing his temples hard. He was right there, he almost had him.

 

Fifty-three hours ago they left Sioux Falls, Sam still confused and breathless, hunkered down in the footwell of the passenger seat.

 

His body's on the run. That's the most he can gather. And Dean has nothing good to say about it.  _You have no idea what he's like, Sammy,_ he keeps saying.  _He doesn't_ feel  _anything. He doesn't care about you or me or anybody but himself. He's scary as shit, almost let me die—_

 

But Sam doesn't want details, so he keeps quiet, letting Dean's anger run its course, until he's more or less silent. 

 

Sam could feel him—scooping south to shake them, and then heading north, near Duluth—and said so before he could think better of it. So they drove, through the night, chasing a near-invisible string of stolen cars and misdirections, until they landed in the bitter urban winter in a no-tell motel on the outskirts of the city, and by then  _he_ was long gone.

 

Now he's taking the drive to Iowa to learn how to make himself as small and unobtrusive as possible in the passenger footwell, and Dean is quiet. Hasn't even bothered to wash the blood off his face.

 

They've barely spoken except to greet each other, at the very beginning. Dean trying not to cry, in frustration and relief. And Sam knew immediately not to show himself completely. Thus the tiny orb of floating light. The way souls  _should_ look, he imagines. Pure, simple, unharmed.

 

Dean doesn't need to see what he actually looks like.

* * *

 

Sam is sure that he's in Hills until they get to Hills, by which point it's obvious—nothing is there except the noise  _he_ left behind. He can see Dean trying to hold back a fit of temper. His jaw is clenched so hard Sam fears he might break teeth.

 

The room is barely touched, but it's loud enough that Sam is sure he was here. Dean doesn't bother checking the place out. He leaves the door wide open, muttering, and sits on the hood of the Impala, looking in and fuming.

 

Sam stays inside. Feels outward at the barely-rumpled bedding. He was barely here at all. Just long enough to find a direction in which to point himself next.

 

Sam wonders where he's running.

 

_I'm not like he says I am._ Almost the same message, but not quite. More desperate.  _If you could see me, you would know._

 

He feels lost. Listening to his own voice in this black musty room. The noise is underneath the bed, pooling on the ceiling, dripping from the lampshades. He feels a prickling in whatever it is he's made of.

* * *

 

“Dean,” he says, “maybe we should stop. Talk about this.”

 

“Talk about what?” Dean says. All the snappishness is gone out of him. He's exhausted. For once in his life his eyes are on the road.

 

“Him.”

 

“What about him?”

 

Sam has managed to make himself the size of a baseball. Easier to look at. From underneath the glove compartment all he can see are Dean's hands on the wheel, a cluster of sky flashing by in the windows.

 

“I think he's scared,” Sam says.

 

“Fuckin' better be.”

 

“Dean—”

 

“Look, you don't know about him.” Dean's rifle is rattling against the seat-back where it lies beside his leg. It makes Sam nervous. “You don't know the shit he's pulled. He's not right, Sammy. Even if you weren't here—”

 

He swallows that, as if the thought of it is too hard.

 

“Even if you weren't here,” he continues, steady, “it'd be time to take him the fuck out. He's dangerous.”

 

It begins to rain. Dashes and drops popping like firecrackers on the windows.

 

Dean reaches out to turn on the windshield wipers.

 

“You feel him?” he says.

 

“You should stop,” Sam says. “Get some sleep.”

 

“Where's he headed?”

 

“Dean.”

 

Dean doesn't ask again.

* * *

 

Mercifully, he does stop. Sam hasn't told him that he can feel the noise heading north again. He figures it can wait. Maybe if Dean hits the pause button and sleeps for a few hours then  _he_ will settle down somewhere, too, feeling safe. 

 

_He_ needs a name. Something besides  _he._ Sam curls up on the motel armchair, watching Dean toss and turn with his boots still on in the first Motel 6 they could find. He wishes he could sleep. He doesn't think he remembers how. The afternoon sun is breaking gently, wetly, through the curtains, though they're closed.

 

It's good to sit still. There's a lot Sam doesn't remember. Doesn't remember the point of breach between the Cage and the surface except for the chilly hand that shoved him through it. He'd barely been listening to Dean's ranting and raving about  _him—_ too shocked by the familiarity of Bobby's house,  _really_ Bobby's house, and not some construction to torture him with, too shocked by the way things looked to his new eyes. Too overwhelmed by the big, anxious warmth of his brother, closer to him than it had been in—he doesn't want to think how long. Knows the years number in the thousands, and that's as far as he wants to go in that direction.

 

He still doesn't fully understand what Dean wants to do, once they find  _him_ . But the vague notion that he gets makes him queasy. Dean  _is_ scaring him. He's full of blood and vinegar, he wants to kill something. Before he fell asleep he told Sam he was sorry, sorry for not sitting still long enough to really welcome him home—that he loves him, that they'll be okay once they sort this all out. He sounded like he was on the brink of a breakdown. Sam is glad he's asleep.

 

_Him, him, him._ Dean refuses to call him  _Sam._

* * *

 

At four PM Dean is still asleep.

 

The noise is getting louder. Coming from outside, distant, in and out like a tornado siren. Sam doesn't know enough about the way his world works now to understand what that means.

 

_I'm not like he says. I'm not. I just want to be left alone._ He can hear it like he imagines angels can hear prayer.  _If you could see me you would know._

 

_I'd like to see you,_ he thinks. Wonders if he can hear him. He imagines not. It's not a two-way street.  _I want to know what you are._

 

_If you could see me, see me, see me._ He feels a tug. Glances at Dean, face-down on the bed, his rifle near his arm like a bedmate. Swallows.

 

Maybe he's biased—his body, and all. But he worries that Dean is wrong about him. This person on the run from them. Dreadfully wrong.

 

_I just want to live._ The noise goes fuzzy, interference on the radio.  _He doesn't get it. But you get it. Don't you?_

 

He's winding down. Far ahead. West Virginia. Sam doesn't want to know how he made it that far so fast.

* * *

 

Dean's still asleep when he leaves. Doesn't move a muscle. Sam feels a pang of guilt. Whispers into the wall:  _West Virginia. I'll make him wait._

 

Outside, in the windy late day, the pale surging moon is wheeling overhead, brighter than it ever was when he had physical eyes to see it through. He lets himself down. Unfolds from the floating point of light he's been for the last few days. The afternoon chill goes through him like knives.

 

He looks down at his body. The ethereal-whatever. Flayed skin and blackened flesh. It's a long way to West Virginia, even on the other side of the veil.

 

He supposes it's always a good time to learn teleportation.

 


	2. Chapter 2

_Cowen, WV_

 

For a while he'd hoped the burning at his back had been a coincidence. A side effect of stress. The consequences of sitting in the shitty front seats of stolen cars across six states. 

 

He's desperate for an hour or two of sleep. Doesn't need it, of course. But his body's screaming for at least a break. Instead he sits on the motel bed, watching the curtains, drinking the last of the complimentary coffee.

 

As soon as it's daylight he's out of here. Headed for the coast. He doesn't know what he'll do then. All he knows is that his number one priority is getting the hell away from Dean, and Dean won't stop until there's an ocean between them, and maybe not even then.

 

But the burning feeling—like a branding iron in the small of his back—is getting hotter, denser. He may not have until daylight.

 

All his things are packed. A rifle full of rock-salt at his thigh. He's nervous, though he doesn't want to admit it. Likes to think he'd know what to do if something came through that door, but knows deep down that he can't plan for this.

 

He doesn't think anyone knows how to plan for meeting their own soul.

 

It's a risk—staying here even though he can feel Sam getting closer. There's no way to be sure that he's alone. If Dean shows up with him—

 

But if he can feel Sam so clearly, it's likely that Sam can feel him, too.

 

He's not much for hope, but he'll hope for this.

 

He gets up, hoping there are still some dregs left in the crusted coffee pot. His mind is buzzing. This is the first time he's allowed himself to sit down and take stock. For the last few days and nights he's been running, leaving red herrings and misdirection, checking into rooms and abandoning them, hiding out in empty houses until he got paranoid—it's strange to be still.

 

There's no way to describe the intrusion that happens, slowly, like honey dripping through a sieve, at his back, or the dimming of the flare in his spine.

 

He doesn't turn around.

 

“Took you long enough,” he says, watching the last drops of coffee ooze into his styrofoam cup.

 

He has to steel himself to look, and he's glad he does.

 

“Good to finally meet you,” says Sam.

 

The first thing he sees is probably the smallest. The index finger on Sam's left hand, put on backwards. Like a kid assembling a doll. Elbows at wrong angles. Eyes sunken so deep that his eye sockets are clean black holes. He's naked. Swathes of torn skin, a heaving lung, mildewed underneath translucent blue flesh, and a pale pink heart beating frantically, veiny, trying desperately to pump blood that isn't there.

 

He takes a drink. The coffee is bitter and burnt.

 

“Where's Dean?” he asks. He's trying not to stare, but it's hard to find Sam's eyes, pushed way back in the way that they are.

 

“Somewhere.”

 

“But he's coming.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He swallows. Somehow he hadn't imagined this. He'd known—in his own small way, given what little he remembers—that Sam wouldn't look good. But he hadn't really imagined.

 

“What do you want?”

 

Sam steps forward; he takes a step back.

 

“Just to talk.” He says it earnestly. “I could hear you—you said—if I saw you, I'd know.”

 

Something about it makes him anxious. “How?”

 

Sam smiles a little, and somehow he's relieved to see that he still can.

 

“You're my body,” he says. “I think. Might have something to do with it.”

 

Sam comes a little closer—curiously, a shy animal—and this time he doesn't back away. Lets him approach, though his broken shape only gets worse the more up-close it gets. He tries to breathe normally. Tries not to inhale too hard.

 

Sam pauses a foot or more away from him. The dull blue glow of him dims a little.

 

“You're scared of me,” he says. It sounds sad.

 

He shakes his head. “No,” he says, through a dry mouth. Isn't sure how true it is. “Just don't exactly trust you, is all.”

 

Sam turns to look back at the door he came through, still locked solid. Then back again. “He's pretty far off,” he says. “Won't figure out I'm gone until nightfall.”

 

“Gives me til the morning,” he says. “You gonna stop me when I leave?”

 

Sam almost looks disappointed.  _Leave?_ he seems to say.  _But I just got here._

 

“I don't think so,” he says. 

 

He could leave, then. He should.

 

He tries to steel himself to move.

 

It's hard to look away from him.  _That's me,_ he thinks.  _Or who I used to be._ There are scars on him he's managed to hide from Dean since he dropped back to the surface of the planet—Cage-scars, whip-marks and gashes and reattached bones—but nothing so bad as what's standing in front of him.

 

He sees the blood dried on the insides of Sam's thighs and swallows hard.

 

He doesn't remember being pulled apart from him. The separation of soul from skin. It had happened so fast that he hadn't even had time to think about it until it became apparent, on Earth, that he was different, not-right, until Cas told them what had happened. And since then he's wondered what it had felt like, before.

 

Sam breaks the silence. His voice is metallic, brittle.

 

“Why does he want to get rid of you so badly?”

 

“He wants you back.” He shifts his weight, setting the empty cup down behind him, trying not to stare too obviously at the dried blood, the exposed lung. “Doesn't care what happens to me.”

 

Sam doesn't say anything. He sets his mouth in an uneasy line.

 

“Thought maybe you'd feel differently,” he says, probing out with just the barest sliver of hope, that maybe he was right to leave those messages, maybe he was right to stay put.

 

Sam looks at him from deep in his skull; there's so many emotions on his face that he doesn't even have words for, having never felt them. But foremost among them is fear.

 

He feels a grounding in his heels and knows he's not leaving.

* * *

 

“We should give me a new name, huh?”

 

In the armchair under the hanging lamp, Sam raises his naked legs onto the seat, wraps his arms around his knees. His head blurs and fades under the hot light.

 

“Why?”

 

He shrugs. “Can't keep being _Sam._ Not really.” He's at the window, looking fruitlessly for any sign of Dean. The sun is setting. The roads are getting dark.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Sam two-point-oh, maybe.”

 

Sam looks uncomfortable. “I don't think so.”

 

“Sam-not.”

 

The ghost says nothing, only dims. He's sad, somehow.

 

“I like that.”

 

“You  _are_ Sam,” he murmurs in response. “We both are.”

 

Sam-not lets the curtains fall closed again, folds his arms over his chest. The sensation of his heartbeat is so much louder now that Sam is here, so much more real.

 

“How much longer do we have?”

 

The ghost doesn't have to look at the clock. “Eight hours,” he says, “give or take.”

 

“Think that's enough time?”

 

Enough time to talk, enough time to figure each other out. There's a choice they have to make that hinges on Dean's arrival and it's something neither of them want to talk about yet. Or ever. He feels that acutely.

 

“That's hardly any time at all,” says Sam.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Dean doesn't know where Sam is. It sends waves of panic through him. He tries everything—calling his name into the cold, empty room, shouting Cas down through the phone, hell, even breaking out Dad's Ouija board—but wherever he went he's not here; and Dean is terrified that he's woken from the best and hardest dream of his life, that when he comes fully to Sam will still be in Hell.

 

He shakes it off. He drives. He goes by instinct, because there's nothing else to go on. Nowhere else to point the car.

 

Something in his bones pulses:  _West Virginia, West Virginia._

* * *

 

“What do you remember?”

 

The way Sam looks at him, he knows he should regret asking. But he doesn't. It's been on his mind since the moment he saw the blood on his legs.

 

“Dean hasn't even asked that,” Sam says. There's a surprising lack of judgment in his voice.

 

Sam-not shrugs. “I don't remember a lot,” he says. “I know I was there. I know they did things I never want to think about again.” He pauses, looks down, wondering whether or not to ruck up his shirt, show off the claw-marks across his navel. But they're nothing compared to Sam's carcass of a soul. “Can't imagine what it was like for you.”

 

“No. You can't,” Sam says.

 

Sam-not—he's getting used to that nickname, if only in his own head—is sitting on the bed, ankles crossed, toying with his rifle. Sam's eyeing it warily—he's a little hurt by that. Maybe an hour ago he'd fully intended to shoot him if he came through the door. Now the idea almost smarts a little.

 

“I guess I don't get what you're doing here,” he says.

 

Sam unfolds from the armchair; he's been sitting there for more than an hour now. Privately Sam-not thinks it's because it's warm, enclosed. Safe. Knows in his gut it's something he probably hasn't felt in—Jesus, well, hundreds of years, thousands; he never got the hang of the mathematics of Hell.

 

Away from the hanging lamp, he's better in focus. It still gives Sam-not shivers to look at him. If he didn't know who and what he was, if he wasn't soulless, had a bit of fear in him, he'd be terrified to find _that_ standing by his bed. 

 

But he does know.

 

He's at eye-level with Sam's single heaving lung. It's almost more disturbing than any other part of him. Breathing nothing.

 

“I wanted to meet you,” Sam says, softly. “Dean made you sound like a monster.”

 

“You get that impression?” Sam-not says, looking up, finding those black sockets.

 

“No,” Sam says. “Not even a little.”

 

“Don't have a soul. I'm not human. Isn't that a monster in your books?”

 

“Last year you and I were the same person,” Sam says, “and Dean thought we were a monster then, too. And we weren't.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“You just want to be left alone,” Sam says. “I get that.”

 

“What about you?” He feels the urge to invite him to sit and he isn't sure why. “You really want to let him do what he's coming to do?”

 

Sam looks uneasy.

 

“What do you think he's going to do?”

 

“Shove you down my throat,” Sam-not says. No point in being coy. Sam shrinks, going kind of purplish. “Kill me. Have you back. He knows what'll happen to you. He doesn't care.”

 

“What'll happen,” Sam repeats—a statement, not a question. “He didn't say what would happen.”

 

“What do you remember?” he asks again.

 

“I'm trying not to remember anything.”

 

“You will. Back in this body, you will. And it'll kill you.”

 

Sam-not lays his rifle aside. He can't meet the ghost's eyes. He feels guilty, though he's done nothing wrong. It was Dean who lied to him. Or kept mum, as the case may be. No reason to tell his tremulous little ghost-brother that coming back to life would just kill him again, in a day, a month, a year.

 

“Cas told him it was dangerous. Told us both. Dean doesn't care.” He looks down at his boots, caked with mud, flaking off on the bedspread. “He wants you back and he wants me gone.”

 

He might not have feelings but he knows when he's hurt someone else's. He watches Sam sink onto the bed at his feet, knees together, gaze straight into the room.

 

“Didn't know that part,” he says, softly.

 

Sam-not leans forward. “Why are you even here?” he says, just as softly. Cajoling, maybe. He won't feel guilty about that. Their lives are on the line. “You could be in Heaven right now. Any reaper worth their salt would be fucking glad to take you.” Sam isn't looking at him. It's like all the shadows in the room are leaching into his black, empty sockets. “Why don't you just go? Forget about Dean, forget about me.”

 

Sam laughs without a hint of humor. “He'd never let me and you know it.”

 

“That's the problem, kid,” Sam-not says, leaning back again. The headboard digs into his spine. “That's the fucking problem.”

* * *

Sam-not takes a shower. Sam sits outside the open bathroom door while he does; it's close to eleven PM. It still amazes him that he can feel anything—physically, that is—like this. He can feel the draft coming in from under the front door against which his leg is pressed. Something about that is wild and wonderful.

 

He's been a ball of light since he came out of Death's briefcase and he hasn't had a chance to take stock of himself yet. Now he does. Maybe he's too old, or too tired, or too numb, to be horrified by what he sees—all the exposed parts of him. Either way, nothing about any of it surprises him too much. He touches his frantic lung. It doesn't feel like anything.

 

He doesn't notice Sam-not in the doorway, toweling off his wet hair, until he speaks.

 

“Don't mind me saying,” he says, “you look like shit.”

 

He looks like he's dressed for sleep—so, in relatively nothing—but Sam knows from Dean's tirades that this particular iteration of himself doesn't sleep. He's not sure how that works.

 

Sam gets up. Follows him back into the room proper, where Sam-not is back on the bed, legs stretched out, briefly holding his towel against his face as if to ground himself. When he pulls it off, Sam sits back down on the bed with him.

 

“Dean said you don't sleep,” he says. He looks at the clock. “How's that?”

 

Sam-not shrugs. “I  _can._ Just don't have a compelling reason to.”

 

“You don't get tired?”

 

“Not really.”

 

Sam pulls a face. “I don't get it.”

 

“And I don't get why your heart is pumping like that when there's nothing to pump,” Sam-not says. It's not judgmental. It even kind of warms him a little. Sam passes a hand over it—the pale dead organ seated in his chest, jaundiced but still working, as if to prove a point.

 

“How far out is he?” Sam-not asks. He's looking at the clock, now, too.

 

Sam listens for the noise of Dean approaching, but whatever faint buzz there is, it's still a long way away. Like a train horn at a great distance. A rumbling felt more in the bones than anything else.

 

“Far,” he says. “You could still leave if you wanted.” Doesn't add,  _wish you wouldn't._ He's not sure about anything with this person—his body—unsure whether or not it likes him or hates him or feels anything at all about him—but at least he doesn't seem afraid of him anymore. It's bizarre to see himself lounging on this bed two feet away, close enough that he can feel the living heat on his flesh. There's a pulling in him that, until now, he's thought was just that heart beating; now he wonders if it isn't leaning downward.

 

Sam-not is quiet for a minute, twisting his lip. Crosses his ankles. “Nah,” he says. “I can kill a few more hours.”

 

They sit in silence for a while, each pretending not to be staring at the other from under their eyelids.

 

“Can't remember the last time I slept,” Sam says. He figures if Sam-not's going to stay he might as well be good company. And he's selfishly glad that he's staying, if only for those few more hours. He doesn't want the last thing he sees of his own body to be a departing back.

 

Sam-not straightens a little bit. “Yeah,” he says, softly. “Bet they weren't too interested in that down there.”

 

Somehow Sam doesn't mind hearing him refer to Hell. There's something kind of comforting about it.

 

“But you  _can_ sleep—right?” There's a quizzical look on his face, pure curiosity. Very human of him, Sam thinks. “Like—if you had the chance.”

 

“Maybe. I haven't tried.”

 

Sam-not shrugs. “Try now.” He doesn't need to indicate the expanse of empty bed beside him. He rolls off it instead, running a hand back through his wet hair. “Why not, right?”

 

Sam looks at him—he has to admit that he's still a little confused. By all Dean's accounts he should have been blasted into kingdom come four hours ago at the killing end of a shotgun. Was half-expecting some kind of animal to be raging in his body when he got here. But in actuality he doesn't seem too terribly— _anything._

 

Just another Sam. A little rougher, a little colder. A little less understanding of the rocky bits of being human, being real. But offering him his bed and a few hours to sleep in after a number of years that Sam can't think about without wanting to absolutely fall apart.

 

“Not like I'm using it,” Sam-not says. Compensating for silence. Sam knows his staring is making him uncomfortable. “I'm serious. You really do look like shit.”

 

Sam looks down at the bed. It's nothing special. Usual hard-as-a-rock motel fare. That weird synthetic fabric underneath him. Stained, caseless pillows. It's the best thing he's ever seen.

 

“And you're not gonna shoot me,” he says. “Or disappear.” He draws one leg up onto the bed. He could almost go limp, it feels so nice. “I'd just find you again.”

 

“Come on,” Sam-not says. He almost sounds a little hurt. “Wouldn't do anything like that.”

 

He's so tired; Sam can see it. Maybe more acutely than he'd ever have been able to see, when he was alive. His whole body is sagging. He may not need to sleep, but—

 

“You sleep, too,” Sam says.

 

“What? No, man.”

 

“You're exhausted.” Sam pulls himself all the way onto the mattress. He's surprised to feel it indent beneath him; he hadn't thought he had any weight. “Don't lie and say you're not.”

 

“I'm not.”

 

But he does sit down on the bed at Sam's feet, and Sam knows he can't make him do anything he doesn't want to do; he may as well take up the offer. He doesn't know when it'll present itself next. If ever. He turns onto his side, pulls his knees up to his chest, makes himself heavy on the pillow. It's always been awkward to be watched, going to sleep. Something Sam has always hated. But as soon as he lies down he's gone, can't care, too tired, so tired, he could almost cry.

 

The lamp goes off, a little heat siphoned from the room.

* * *

 

Sam-not does sleep—in the armchair by the bed. It's not that he's averse to sharing. He just doesn't think Sam would appreciate another body introducing itself into his space without permission.

 

But he doesn't sleep long. Instinct won't let him. He's worried about missing the rumble of the Impala's engine or the slow groan of daylight by which point it'll be too late to run. And he will run. Just as soon as Sam is ready to let him.

 

He wonders briefly why he hasn't, yet. Sam made it pretty clear he wouldn't stop him. But he's so—pathetic. And he doesn't think that maliciously—it's just true: he's fragile, busted up, scared, probably, by Dean's erratic behaviour, this witch-hunt he's on.

 

Sam-not wonders if Sam feels safe with him. Would wager that, for whatever metaphysical reason, he does.

 

He watches him sleep. His eyes are dry and every so often Sam's figure blurs out into a curled-up stretch of light. And his lung still heaves and his heart still pumps.

* * *

 

He's watching it swell and contract when Sam wakes up, with kind of a pale, surging glow, like a jellyfish meeting the surface of the ocean.

 

“Why do you look like that?” Sam-not asks.

 

It's one AM.

 

Sam doesn't say anything. The answer's obvious, anyway.

 

A different question. “Does Dean know you look like that?”

 

Sam sets his mouth.

 

“No.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“That's a stupid question.” Sam uncurls a little. He keeps his legs pressed together as if squeezing himself tight makes him feel safer.

 

“Why don't you change it?”

 

“What?”

 

“Why don't you fix it?” Sam-not gets up from his chair, adjusts his shirt, his hair. This is why he hates sleeping—never sure what he's saying when he wakes, never sure of himself. “If you can make yourself look like anything—if you can hide all that from him—”

 

Sam sits up, crossing his elbows over his hips.

 

“Haven't tried,” he says. “I don't really remember what I used to look like.”

 

_You're right here,_ Sam-not wants to say.

 

Instead he sits back down on the mattress. Tries not to let his disgust show when he looks at him. Maybe it's not so much disgust as pity—it's like looking at a kicked puppy.

 

“Want me to model for you?” he says, semi-seriously, and feels himself smiling a little when Sam's own grin cracks out, if only a little. “Really.” He pulls up the hem of his shirt, and Sam's smile gets a little wider.

 

“Thanks,” he says, “but no thanks. I think I'm okay.”

 

“I mean. You're not.”

 

Sam is quiet for a minute. Absently his hand comes up to rest over his heart.

 

“No,” he says.

 

Sam-not—he has the strangest feeling—knows it isn't real, or practical, but has it anyway: that if  _he_ touched Sam, touched him gently with the flats of his hands, he could fix those open wounds. Spirit-body mumbo-jumbo. Surely there's some kind of folklore about that. 

 

He kind of wants to try. It's a one-AM kind of decision.

 

“I think Dean was wrong,” Sam says, and he stops thinking about touching him, because that's definitely not what he expected to hear tonight. “I don't think you are what he says you are.”

 

“Gee, thanks,” Sam-not says, but he can't cover up his breath of relief.  _Finally._ “What tipped you off?”

 

“Watch the sarcasm. It's a compliment,” Sam says, but he's smiling. Something about that is a little bit wonderful. He doesn't know for sure, but he would bet money he's the first person to make Sam smile in—a long, long time.

 

“Yeah. Okay.”

 

“I kind of like you.”

 

Without thinking, “I kind of like you, too.”

 

They're silent. Looking at each other.

 

Sam-not's been thinking in mirrors all night. They're like some shitty installation art piece. Reflections that don't match up. He feels less like the  _Sam_ he's been pretending to be, the  _Sam_ he is, than he ever has before—feels like a shell, realises he's felt a little like one all along. There's a personhood he's been missing all this time and it's not in him, and it's not in Sam, not in that pathetic, fragile ghost-thing, but somewhere in between them on the mattress, somewhere in the space between their knees.

 

He wonders for a moment who  _Sam_ actually is.

 

“What Dean wants to do,” Sam says—in that hesitant way; he's trying to convince himself of it even as he says it—“I don't think I like it.”

 

“That's what I've been saying.”

 

“I like you—and I kind of want—” His voice is sideways, cracked.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You know.”

 

“I think so.”

 

Sam reaches out—touches Sam-not's face with the barest brush of his fingertips, like a blind man feeling, trying to know. Sam-not leans forward to kiss him.

 

Sam is as cold as he expected and more pliant than he'd ever dreamed. But just as soft as real lips, real skin. His heartbeat is silent between them. He puts his hands on either side of Sam-not's throat.

 

He won't touch him. Has been wanting to kiss him since he fell asleep but hasn't thought it was the right thing to do. But at the very least he won't touch him. He remembers a little and can presume a lot. He doesn't have a soul, but he knows, maybe better than anyone, where a soul hurts.

 

Sam inhales—like a breath of frost on his cheek—runs his fingers up into Sam-not's hair, kind of shifts downward, flatter, relaxing, and he isn't sure what to do, but knows it's a silent  _okay,_ at the very least. Kisses him again and then stops, and Sam's hands come out of his hair. The room comes to a slow stop and Sam-not can't remember when it started spinning.

 

It could have happened in a dream. It just made sense to do it.

 

“I don't know what to do,” Sam says.

 

“Me either.”

 

Sam touches his throat again, softly. As if he likes to feel the pulse beneath his fingers.

* * *

 

“What time is it?”

 

“Five.”

 

The sun will rise in an hour or two. Sam can hear Dean, now. The noise of him rolling over asphalt. He's closer than the sun is. And they haven't decided anything.

 

All Sam knows—he doesn't want his body to die. Not for his sake. And he hasn't said as much, not yet. But he hopes that Sam-not gets it.

 

“You remember that myth?” Sam says. He's let the blood disappear from his legs. He keeps stealing looks at them—strange to see his flesh underneath. “I think we heard it in college. One of those freshman classes.”

 

“What myth?” Sam-not is at the window, increasingly anxious. He can feel Dean coming, too, in his own way.

 

“That Zeus one. About how people used to have two heads and four arms and four legs.” (He's decided that when Dean comes, he'll let him see him. The way he's hurt.) “And Zeus split them apart. One head, two arms, two legs. And that's soulmates. They're always looking for their other half.”

 

“Plato?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You think that's us?”

 

“No,” Sam says. “But I don't think it's much different, either.”

* * *

“I'd feel a lot better if you made a decision.”

 

“You know what my decision is.”

 

“Okay—I'd feel a lot better if you committed to it.” Sam-not's practically vanished inside the curtains, looking out into the pre-dawn light, a lump in his throat that Sam can almost feel in his own. “I want to know I'm not gonna die when he busts that door down.”

 

“You won't.” Sam's not much better—standing just at his shoulder, nearly obliterated from sight by the rising day. “I won't let him.”

 

“What are you gonna tell him?”

 

Sam swallows. “I don't know,” he says. “I haven't figured that out yet.”

 

He's felt this before. The interminable waiting when something is about to happen but hasn't happened yet. And the last time wasn't any easier than this.

 

“I should let you come back in,” Sam-not says, half to himself. “What nature intended, and all that shit.”

 

“No. You shouldn't.”

 

“I know. I won't.” He seems almost guilty about it. “But it'd be the right thing to do.”

 

Sam rests his forehead briefly on his shoulder. “You sound like Dean,” he says. He's a weighted chill on Sam-not's back. Maybe he kisses him; Sam-not can't tell.

* * *

 

They leave the window. Sit on opposite ends of the bed. Sam rests one hand inside the vague warmth of his open chest, beneath the lung. Sam-not knows he's thinking desperately of what he'll say when Dean gets here, rifle-bearing and angry as hell. He doesn't try to interrupt.

 

He doesn't like to admit that he has the ability to feel afraid. He's not supposed to  _feel_ anything. But he wonders if Sam's not rubbing off on him a little, in such close proximity. He is scared—scared that something will go wrong, that Sam will cave under his brother's pressure. He'd like to think better of him. 

 

But for someone who  _was_ him for so long, he still doesn't know if he can trust him.

* * *

 

 

It happens fast. The noise of the engine growling up the road, and then it cuts, and Sam's head turns toward the door, and Sam-not hears the loud  _thunk_ of every lock inside it slamming shut. He gets to his feet, leans down over the bed for his gun.

 

“You don't need that,” Sam says, rising, squaring his shoulders.

 

“Better safe than sorry,” Sam-not says.

 

For a moment there's an awful quiet, and then there's a knock on the door.

 

“Sammy,” comes Dean's voice, “I know you're there. Let me in.”

 

They look at each other.

 

“I have to go out,” Sam says, softly.

 

Sam-not nods.

 

He knows they should say goodbye. For whatever bond there is between them, for whatever that kiss meant. Funny—he hadn't thought he'd be so sorry to see Sam go. The idea is like something being yanked from his chest.

 

He can't decide how to remember it—what to call it—the wonderment of kissing his own soul, feeling it touch him, feeling, if only infinitesimally, real.

 

Feeling.

 

He doesn't say anything. Sam reaches out with his cold, cold hand to touch his arm, his wrist, the back of his hand. Everything natural in him is tightening its teeth:  _don't let him leave. You're supposed to be together. You're supposed to be one person._

 

“Be safe,” Sam says.

 

“Get some rest,” Sam-not says. It's a shitty way to say,  _get some peace._ But it'll do.

 

Sam takes a few steps toward the door. Then he melts through it, ball lightning passing through a wall.

 

Sam-not breathes a breath he hadn't meant to be holding.

* * *

 

In daylight, Sam is practically nothing. Dean sees enough.

* * *

 

He waits with him on the hood of the car. His hands are shaking. Sam's head is on his shoulder. He wishes he could hate the contentment humming in his brother's soul but he can't. Not quite. Not enough.

 

“You'll let him go,” Sam says. “Right?” His voice is almost lost in the heavy damp wind coming in from the fields, scattering the weeds in the motel parking lot.

 

Dean doesn't say anything. He wishes he could see through that locked and bolted door. Wishes he knew what the fuck  _he_ told Sam, to make him arrive at this decision.

 

“Right?”

 

“Sam,” Dean says, exhausted.

 

“He's me,” Sam says, his voice going hard. “Whether you like it or not.”

 

“He's not you. He's not what matters about you.”

 

Sam doesn't try to argue. Dean knows how tired he must be. Hates himself for feeling so angry. But he does feel angry. All this way, all those miles, all that worrying, and Sam's going to walk away from him again, and the thing that took his place will walk away, too. And what's he got left then?

 

“Thank you,” Sam says. “I didn't say  _thank you_ yet.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For bringing me home.”

 

The wind picks up. They sit together.

* * *

 

Dean doesn't see what comes up the portico walkway. He only sees Sam looking out into blank space, a wash of relief colouring him white. He gets off the hood of the car, stands.

 

He turns his head back to Dean, just long enough to smile at him, in thanks, or something like it.

 

He doesn't say goodbye, because he knows Dean won't have it. Doesn't say  _I love you,_ because he knows Dean knows it, and that neither of the things he could have said would have made any of it okay.

 

Dean tries to feel happy.

 

Sam's walking down the sidewalk, holding something's hand. In the weeds near the edge of the motel he disappears—fading like a sunspot from the surface of Dean's eye.

 

Sam's going to Heaven. Where he belongs. Free from Hell, free from pain, and fear, free from all of it. Free from Dean.

 

And he's still here.

* * *

 

Sam-not doesn't look when the locks open. He's lacing his boots in the armchair, concentrating on keeping them tight, and there's only one person it would be.

 

“I'm leaving,” he says. He finishes the knot and looks up. Dean's a black shadow in the doorway, featureless with the sun behind him. “Don't worry. You're never gonna see me again.”

 

Dean doesn't say anything.

 

Sam-not gets up, opens up the bag that's sitting on the bed. He puts his rifle into it. His heart has been beating loudly for the last few minutes. He knows without knowing that Sam is gone, and he's trying not to feel it too deeply.

 

“I'll stay out of your way,” he says. “Okay? I'm gone. I'm out of your life.”

 

He zips up the bag—hadn't taken much out to begin with. He slides the strap over his shoulder, squares himself. Turns to face him fully.

 

“I'm sorry it happened this way,” he says. (And he is. Really.) “I know it was hard.”

 

Dean still doesn't say anything.

 

His shoulder shifts.

 

“But you did the right thing,” he says. “Maybe you don't think so now—”

 

The first bullet hits between his eyes. The second through his temple. He's dead when he hits the floor. Blood and skull and gore, up the wall.

 

Dean shuts the door behind him.

 

 


End file.
